Friday, January 29, 2010

First Month of Sabbatical

My initial timetable was to complete Chapter 2 of my proposal by today. Since that initial plan, a few events changed the order of the list. My adviser (who hasn't given up on me - yet!) asked that I temporarily suspend work on Chapter 2 and switch to working on Chapter 3. And the experiment is going full-speed-ahead. My adviser asked that the end-of-term survey be divided, administer half of the survey now and the remainder at the end of the term. That small task turned into a two-week event - however, it is mostly complete.

So the progress has been focused on Chapter 3. As it turns out, if you actually work on the document, you can progress. That is, once I am stopped worrying about it, complaining about it, trying to organize it, or do anything other than just write it, progress happened!

Luckily, I have a number of people who were kind enough to kick my butt - especially my husband, who reminds me that I can make anything difficult if I try. He recommended that I just sit down and get it done and you know, I think he's right.

So Chapter 3 is nearly done - I'll do more work this weekend, then email the draft to my adviser on Monday with an update on the surveys. It does feel good to make progress!